Farakka dam

Over 80 rivers of the country dried up during last three decades due to the construction of the Farakka barrage on the Indian side of the river Ganges, reports BSS.

In addition, 100 other rivers in the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna basins are also heading towards forced deaths as their existence is under great threat, LGRD and Cooperatives Minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan said in city Monday.

"Bangladesh has been put into a man-made disaster through the unilateral withdrawal of waters in the upstream by the Farakka barrage," Bhuiyan said at a seminar held at the DPHE Bhaban.

The NGO Forum for Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Department of Public Health and Engineering (DPHE) organised the seminar titled "Water: The Friend and Foe of Mankind' in observance of the World Water Day.

Mannan Bhuiyan said the unilateral withdrawal of waters from the upstream has posed serious threat to the ecology and biodiversity in Bangladesh.

The largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans, is on the verge of destruction because of lack of sweet water and increase of salinity in the rivers, he added.

The LGRD minister, also the secretary general of BNP, said the government has raised strong protest against the Indian inter river-linking plan, which would jeopardise lives and livelihoods of over 10 crore people in Bangladesh.

Danish Ambassador to Bangladesh in his speech at the function said the dwindling surface water has posed a serious threat to crops and agriculture as well as environment of the country. He said the safe and reliable drinking water has also become a major challenge in today's Bangladesh.

The decline of sweet water invited intrusion of saline water in croplands, while the over extraction of ground water made millions inaccessible to safe drinking water especially with arsenic contamination.